Technologies for enabling data-bearing hard copy afford a number of interesting applications, including labels, packaging, signage, and documents in general. Non-limiting examples of data-bearing media may include data-bearing magnetic media (e.g., magnetic storage), data-bearing optical media (e.g., optical storage), data-bearing atomic media (e.g., atomic storage), data-bearing images, etc. For example, data-bearing images may include data-bearing halftoned images (e.g., halftoned images in which explicit data is added by altering the halftone structure in a controlled/causal way), graphical alpha-numerics, barcodes, etc.
One approach of enabling data bearing properties may be encoding information in a recoverable (readable) manner in the halftone of an image. Halftone screening techniques represent one of the methods imaging companies have used to improve the quality of printed pieces. These techniques can possibly improve the aesthetic qualities and fidelity of printed reproductions. Clustered-dot halftoning converts the original image into a series of dots of varying size to simulate tonal difference, displaying detail in the image. Darker areas of the image are printed with larger dots and lighter areas are printed with smaller dots. These different sized dots absorb the light reflecting from the paper in varying amounts thus giving the illusion of different shades of gray while printing with black ink.